The Cold Ones by Jandco
by ControlPossessSeduceContest
Summary: Contest Entry for the Control. Possess. Seduce. Contest


**Contest Entry for the Control. Possess. Seduce. Contest**

 **Title:** The Cold Ones

 **Rating:** M

 **Summary:** Contest Entry for the Control. Possess. Seduce. Contest

 **Disclaimer:** The author does not own any publicly recognizable characters herein. No copyright infringement is intended.

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 **The Cold Ones**

The A was a rundown, red brick, seven-story industrial building; a gash in the middle of our smoggy city. It was a head-shop in the seventies; it used to host punk shows in the eighties. In the nineties, club kids took the building over, lit it with strobe lights and bright colors. They had raves and drugs that made the dank walls turn to dreams. That scene faded out when a couple of kids O.D'd or got stabbed while they were dancing their problems away.

In more recent years, misfits took the place like thieves and turned it into a home for strays who had nowhere to go.

When Angela and I were fourteen, we wore backpacks and push-up bras and took the bus to the A. We pushed it too far with men who didn't give a damn how old we were. They'd give us pills and booze and make us feel older. Once, I sliced a guy's leg open with a beer bottle in the alley when he took his pants off and wouldn't get off of Angela. I've never had a problem drawing blood when it was for the greater good.

When we were sixteen, Angela moved away and our group was seven deep.

Emmett and Rose, party makers, an infamous DJ duo, co-Gods of the underground, known to show up when you least expect them, their favor to society was just to exist. She had a shaved head and I don't know that he ever saw daylight or sobriety. They made the kids dance; they turned their lives. They used to puppet-master crowds of kids, and god, those kids would love it; they'd lose themselves to Emmett and Rose. It was this kind of reciprocal romance between puppets and string-pullers. It was beautiful—it was drugs and manipulation and shallow—but it was beautiful.

Alice was a ballerina who took over the catwalk of the A to choreograph and stare down below to the depths at Jasper, who bore scars that carried stories no one knew, except for maybe Alice. On Sundays, Jasper made beautiful things from terrible pieces of trash. He believed in God and Jesus, too. Jasper was desperate for some kind of unseen truth, to have unwavering faith in _something_ and I believe that's what he was doing by turning filth into something new. He never said, though, so I don't know, but I do know I have seen him make gorgeous, honest pieces out of complete and utter trash.

Jasper once said that is what Jesus does every second of every day. Once, I asked him why he only made art on Sundays, as I passed a joint over to him. He laughed in this sad way and said he's too busy committing the worst sins during the week.

Of course, DJ's, ballerina's and artists were just disguises—illusions- to cover up what they really were.

Then there was Mike who illustrated comic books and Jess who gave crude tattoos. As a couple, they lived on the line between love and hate. She berated and he cheated but I could never be sure what order that goes; only that it was a vicious cycle with teeth and neither were ever willing to run away from the other.

By the time I was seventeen, we were starving to create something beyond ourselves and dying to cause destruction over every perceived injustice we encountered. We were eager to swallow or snort or smoke anything that was promised to take us beyond a world that always failed to meet the impossible standards we sought, so we _created_ our own world.

We were _those_ ones, the ones too sensitive or too mean, too clever or too stupid for society. We were made up of all who'd ever dared to be the blackest sheep or to be captivated by one.

By day we toiled doing our work or we slept off sins from the night before. We threw parties- terrible, loud and violent parties that slashed into the night and blurred into gray mornings. Our motives for coming around may have been different, but the goal was the same: to live like everyone else cannot. For awhile, my God, we did.

When I met Edward, I was eighteen and leaning against the bricks of the A, watching a couple of kids across the road spray paint a wall to cover poverty with vandalism.

A bus came bursting down the street, groaning in a cloud of its own exhaust before stopping with a hiss, right in front of the A and me.

The cigarette between my fingers burnt down to the butt and I tossed it near the curb as the bus pulled away.

He was standing there in the wake of exhaust, a backpack hung low on his shoulders, the collar of his jacket was pulled up against the wind, but unbuttoned. His jeans hung too low and not on purpose, his faded red t-shirt looked too threadbare for the chilly night. But his eyes looked healthy.

He stood there in the middle of the street then turned his head a bit, his profile sharp and yellow under the buzzing street lights that barely managed to stay aglow.

The spray painting kids looked up and down the street then slowly loped over to him. I got the urgent feeling that I should look away, that I shouldn't see this but then he caught my eye and I was well, caught.

He stared for a second and both of the younger boys looked at me, too.

I'd never once questioned how the A maintained its illegal pharmacy, how illicit things were passed around like popcorn. But of course, someone had to be selling the party supplies. I was the only one who didn't know him because while Edward preferred to stick to dark shadows, I was living life loud and right in the middle of every party.

"Be cool," he said to me from the middle of the road. It was a smooth order with a hint of smile.

"What?" I asked as he slid the backpack from his shoulders and handed it to one of the kids. He nodded his head to the left and they loped off into the night. "Were you talking to me?"

My words sounded stupid in their echo, hanging there while he shoved his hands in his coat pockets and started toward me and the A.

You know, later, I could deny it and say I couldn't tell what he was, I could say I thought he was just another arrogant punk hanging around the A, but that'd be a lie. It was plain as day, strung all over him.

He was King.

Much later, I would see that we weren't enlightened and cool, we weren't some exclusive club of awareness and grit. We weren't doing terrible things to dig us out of a shithole and to a brighter life.

The ends did not justify the means.

We were just defunct—as in fucked.

EPOV

Right before I met Bella that first night, my shoe kicked in the ribs of a nameless bastard with no money-money that he ought to have, because he promised. I thought maybe his ribs should splinter and pierce his heart because what good is a man's heart if he can't even keep a promise? That was the problem with the addicted ones. They start off so true and vulnerable and then they break promises. The whole business end of this is heartbreaking.

Emmett used the butt of a pistol and slapped the hell out of his temple, then Em put his hand on my back when we headed down the dark street. Emmett shoved his hands in his pockets, but I cried as I spit over my shoulder.

That night, we were out to get paid, to lend, to sell. Sometimes it got violent and I did what I had to do even if I hate it. But you let one person get away with bullshit, and there goes your name. It seems like we're cruel and crazy but we're not.

What we actually did, is make the party. When we show up, all of the sudden, everyone knows they're somewhere darker and cooler than they expected to be. It's like we made an entry into their books of lives. Everyone got a thrill around us, and that's all I ever loved about it, really. The whispers and lit up eyes in my presence and the unspoken promise I could bring to them whatever they wanted—I was loved like I was some kind of chemical fairy godmother. But everyone hates when it's time to pay the piper. If I could hate anything, I'd hate that part, too.

Bella can tell it how she wants, but Bella has always been meaner than me. I might react with more violence, I might strike sharper and with more flame, but when I do, it's obvious and right to the open eyes and done with bruised love. But Bella? She's sneaky about her brand of violence.

She's no angel, but she had humor and doe eyes and the kind of charisma that drives a man wild. She had long legs, wit, a smart mouth, misdemeanors and me.

She could be downright cruel and unfair, two things I could never be. That's both the problem with me and the biggest difference between us.

I love it all, even when it's terrible. But _Bella_? Bella knows how to hate.

BPOV

Alice was topless and on her stomach, stretched out on a faded beach towel she spread on the concrete floor of the A. Jess was straddling her back, working on a tattoo that they'd started forever ago with no plans of finishing anytime soon.

Mike was at his old metal desk in the far left corner, markers and pens abounded around him. His knuckles rea and his expression read 'fuck off.'

Jasper was on an old chaise lounge, Alice's sunglasses over his eyes, despite the fact that he was reading a beat up book in the dim light. Jasper hated to be in the light. I used to think it was because of his scars, but it's more than that. He's sweet, so he never holds himself up to the light, for fear of having to see his own sins. I heard there were many.

I grabbed a plastic yellow bottle of bubbles someone had left rolling on the floor and got comfortable next to Alice.

"What do you know about Edward Cullen?" I asked.

I held my bare feet up in the air and stirred the bubble wand around in the soap.

Jess lifted the tattoo gun from Alice's back.

"He's beautiful. And I heard he fucks like a lion," Jess said. "Strong and only from behind."

"Nice," Mike muttered over his shoulder at her.

"I don't know from experience," Jess said, leaning over Alice to pick up her plastic tumbler of gin.

"Why?" Alice asked, her eyes slowly sliding to Jasper, who was gazing at me now, sunglasses pulled up and tangled into his ashy colored hair.

"Because," I smiled coyly.

"Bella, do you remember what you said to me when we first met, and I asked if you were going to school at all?" Alice asked.

"I told you I did once. I spent the better part of a semester at Princeton."

"You did?" Jess asked. "You're so young."

"I was an artist's model for a Life Drawing class but they kicked me out for being sixteen," I said. "And not a student. But how could I have been a student at sixteen? Semantics and red tape turned me off so much I decided right then and there higher education wasn't my thing. What does this have to do with Edward Cullen?"

Alice smiled sweetly and propped up, chin on her hands.

"You, sweet-pea, live like a dream. Like a big, puffy hearted dream in a fantasy. You flit, you dance, you have no idea what filth or corruption looks like because even though it's all around you, you don't acknowledge it."

"So?" I asked, blowing bubbles to the rafters, not bothering to correct her.

"So, filth and corruption is what Edward Cullen is," Alice said. She looked to Jasper who put his elbows on his knees and spoke slow and low.

"He's a blue boy who got so sad, it made him mean," Jasper said with a slow grin. "Stay away, Bella. He bites."

"What he means," Alice said, her eyes slinking back from Jasper to me, "is there are certain people like Jasper and Edward and even me who are…different. _So_ different, that in order to be with someone like Edward, you have to be changed into someone _like_ Edward. Because a dream girl like you couldn't handle how he lives and you can't change someone like Edward. He's bad ways are set in stone."

"Changed into him to be with him? Like in a vampire love story?" I asked Alice with a smile.

"Maybe a little like that," Alice agreed.

Eventually Jasper passed out and Mike and Jessica had found their way to an argument. Right before they left, calling each other the worst names right out the door, I caught a glimpse of Jess's name on Mike's hand again. I thought it was a funny thing, Jessica and Mike and that tattoo. It was as though as long as her name was there, on his hand, he could be pushing her away and pulling her back all at the same time. I didn't understand that type of push and pull. Yet.

EPOV

Bella had been trying to get at me for weeks. Alice mentioned it but she didn't have to. I see everything though I ignore most of it. I can afford most things; I have tainted money hand over fist. But I cannot afford distractions, so I pick and choose what to block out—even if I'm aware of all of it.

Not only did I know Bella was trying to give it up to me, I wanted it, even if I didn't want her to want it. And that was already too complicated for me. I like to confront and tear down or plow through; I don't have time to spend untangling romantic complications.

Someone had pasted fliers all over the city for a party at the A. They were black and white, boasting obscenities and promising the time of your fucking life, which would be supplied by me, I supposed. I don't stick around for that shit, I don't want to see people out of their minds, making bad decisions while they pop or snort life-ruining things that they paid me for.

Rose once said what I do is called compartmentalizing. I sell and don't make the connection that I'm essentially killing people or hooking people so that I can make more money. I don't look at it, so it's not in my face but still, I know what that makes me. I know it makes me some kind of small devil, someone evil, someone who you shouldn't let your little sister sit next to on a bench, someone who belongs in prison, someone who shits on human life and someone everyone should hate.

The thing about this is you get caught in it: you start owing people and then people owe you. Eventually you find you're so tangled in this web that it has turned dog-eat-dog.

If you tried to walk away- if you tried to just wash your hands and start over-you couldn't because that could get you killed and the people you dragged into this could be in a shit ton of trouble and the only way out is to make it bigger-be the scariest one out there- own it all so you can sell it all.

What no one knows is that I'm drowning in this. It'll kill me some day. It won't be someone else's gun or any of that typical violence that usually comes with this life; I'll be crushed from the inside out by the weight of what I've become.

There are sacrifices that come with being me, and pretty girls who I can't stand to see hurt is one of them. I thought I could never have a good girl to love- not with any kind of sincerity- because they'd end up hurt or hating me and God, I'm such a lover I couldn't stand that.

The point is, I never intended to wrap Bella up in this web. I intended to sleep with her; I intended to yank on her coat buttons and put my hands in her hair and see how far she could bend over.

I couldn't have anticipated what was to come because if people around here still have hearts at all, they certainly don't go opening them up to the likes of me. They open legs, wallets, doors—but they never give up heart.

How was I supposed to know she would?

BPOV

The heat prickled the back of my neck in a way that burns so much it itches. I could feel drops of sweat rolling down my temples, down my spine and the backs of my bare knees. My hair whipped in sticky, damp strands, stinging my cheeks and stuck to my gums. I didn't bother taming my hair because I simply couldn't stop laughing and moving.

Alice was next to me and Jess, writhing under flashing lights. Pale parts of her flashed, showing dirty-girl glimpses of glamour and naughty filth. Alice has always shown just a flash of who she is, letting certain parts of herself come to play- but only briefly and only under party-all-night-lights. I had learned that she was always probably up to no good and keeping it all secret from me.

Alice took both of my hands and spun me 'round to Rosalie's music, but she abruptly stopped me short, her hands on my waist.

"Look, there," she said into my ear. She smelled like candy, and her voice was almost taunting. "I think you'd be good for him."

Edward Cullen was on the fringes of our over-spilling party. In a room of tossing elbows and shouts and jumping, Edward Cullen was walking with purpose, his jacket open and his silhouette looming painfully handsome under the pulsing lights. He stayed against the wall and headed for the back staircase.

"Go," Alice said with a laugh, giving me a shove. When I looked over my shoulder to her, I caught sight of Rose up near Emmett, shoulder to shoulder at their makeshift table. Rose stared back at me. It was the only time I remember her music faltering, a scratch in her play.

EPOV

This girl. My god, _this girl._ I'll tell you now: she came to me. She followed me right through the jungle and into the lion's den, smiling and calling my name the entire time. When a girl like Bella calls for you in way in a way no one who actually knew you ever would, you take note and then you take whatever else you can.

I don't go parading it out because doing it would be detrimental to me, to my cohorts and to beautiful girls, but I'm a lovesick fool. I just rarely get the opportunity to act like one.

BPOV

The cellar of the A was a forbidden place, but I never paid much attention to rules.

Edward was under a bare, glowing light bulb that hung from the rafters; his tall frame was leaning against some kind of work bench. He'd taken his jacket off and was closely inspecting a few cuts and lumps on his hand.

"Hurt yourself?" I asked, my heart pounding as I stepped in to his space.

"No."

"Did you hurt someone else?"

He looked at me, dark eyes and half a smile. He smelled like the cold night. There was a flush to his cheeks making him look nicer than he actually was.

"If that's what you think, why would you come down here?" he asked, his words quiet between us.

"I hear you're pretty fucking bad," I said, "but then I see you and I think maybe you aren't."

"What if I am?" he asked, moving away from me, but it was something playful, and that surprised me. I hadn't realized he might be _fun_.

"Then I'll be bad for a night, too," I told him.

He turned his back on me and laughed out loud, crossing to the corner where he pulled a fresh t-shirt out of a duffel bag on the floor.

I watched him take off his shirt. The sleek muscles of his back stretched and bunched over taut pale skin. His left side was dotted in bruise like shadows.

"You're a fucking wreck," I said.

"Yeah," he said, turning around as he pulled his shirt down. "I am."

"I like it."

"What'd you come down here for?" he asked before lifting himself to sit on the workbench.

"I don't do drugs anymore," I told him. "I don't want to buy or sell anything. I'm just trying to hit on you, sweet thing."

"You want a quick screw in the basement?" he asked, leaning over to open a drawer that was between his swinging legs.

"No. Maybe. But I feel like there might be more to you than pushing opiates and a swinging dick. Maybe I just wanted to come see about you," I told him.

He raised his eyebrows and dropped three small plastic bags on the table next to him.

"There's not much to know. I deal trouble," he said, nodding to the bags.

"I thought that'd be harder to pry out of you," I said with a laugh.

"I'm easy," he lied.

There was something brewing under his skin; there were things he wasn't saying and there were warnings in his eyes. Problem is I'm often most attracted to the things I'm warned against.

"What did you think the first time you saw me?" I asked.

"Out by the bus?"

"You remember."

"I don't forget much," he said with a shrug. "I thought…This girl is about to get ruined in this mean place. I should hold her hand."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I remembered I'm the mean place," he laughed.

I went to him and picked up his bruised, cut up hand.

"No one is meaner than me," I told him and kissed hard on a bruise until he yanked his hand back and looked at me, seemingly shocked that I dared to hurt him with a kiss.

" _You're_ a fucking wreck," he said, but he was leaning in toward me. His hand reached out and he quickly fisted the thin material of my shirt just between my breasts and pulled me in to him.

"I know," I said.

"I like it."

EPOV

I knew better than to actually follow through with this—for both of our sakes. I knew it was time to take her home and tuck her into where ever she came from, but I didn't.

I commit the worst sins, knowing full well they're wrong.

I tempt people into shit they'll never get out of unscathed.

I'm a thick file of felonies that I've yet to be caught for and I was leading Bella into something she didn't even know she didn't want.

I knew better. I always know better. But it never stops me.

I kissed her, because this is what I do.

BPOV

There's a back alley behind the A and sometimes, when no one wants to be stuffed up inside but we don't want to go out and waste our havoc on the outside world, we just go back there, in that alley. Those days, though, I was there with purpose, waiting for Edward to come back to me from where ever it is he went to do his dirty work.

Mike and Jessica were making out up against the bricks like a pair of nymphomaniacs when she pulled away from him and looked down at me. I was sitting between two concrete posts, painting my toenails hot pink in the near dark.

"I heard a rumor about you," Jess said, then stuck her finger in Mike's mouth, laughing when he pretended to bite it.

"It's probably true," I said.

"I heard you've achieved the motherfucking impossible," Jess said, stepping away from the wall and moving to the middle of the alley. I stood up, willing to get caught up in something silly for the night.

"Tell me!"

Mike smirked and lit a match on the bricks to light his cigarette. I stepped over to Jess and she wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her cheek to mine.

"I heard Edward Cullen is in true-blue love with you."

I screamed when Jess did and she clapped both hands in the air. I played along with her because she was high and I was mostly drunk. At that point, this wasn't news to me.

Edward was in love with me, possibly even as much as I was with him.

Since our night in the cellar months ago, we found all kinds of time in the dark to whisper things to each other and play slippery games with happy endings.

I read him anecdotes from my phone and he slept lazy days away with his head on my stomach. We shared cigarettes and water bottles and he pulled on my toes and once we made a child's fort out of old tarps we found around the A.

I had found a world I hadn't known existed, all wrapped up inside of Edward, with his few but intense words and his sudden and beautiful smiles. He'd come back around the A near dawn on the nights he left with Jasper and Emmett—sometimes Rosalie- and he'd seek me out. Sometimes he'd take me with him to the basement where we'd eat dry cereal from the box and roll around on the saggy couch. Sometimes he'd be around, calling out for me, and when he'd find me he'd say " _I just wanted to see what you're going to do next."_

He had yet to say love, but he didn't have to. The looks he gave and the way he touched me told me he was an animal in love, which was fortunate, because that's what I was, too.

Jess and Mike skittered off, leaving me in a trail of their sloppy kisses in the alley. It wasn't long before Edward, Rosalie and Jasper showed up, three shady silhouettes slinking around the corner. Jasper held a metal bat over his shoulder and Edward was grinning down the way at me, hood up, one hand coming out of his pocket to curl his finger for me to come to him.

"If you're in love with me," I called from my end of the dark alley, "You'll catch me and never let me go."

I ran, eyes closed, under the stars and over the litter, where I was caught like a fish on a hook.

I wrapped my legs around Edward's waist. Over his shoulder I caught the eye of Rose, who looked to Jasper then turned to go in the building, not before looking over her shoulder at Edward.

"That's just fucking fantastic," she said.

"Go away, Rose," Edward said, looking up at me while he held me high.

Jasper raised his eyebrows and snapped his teeth at me, conjuring up his words about vampires from months ago.

This time, I laughed the two of them right back inside the building.

"Are you in love with me?" I asked Edward.

"It's not what I thought it would be," he said. "But I am. And not because I want to or because I trust you."

"Well then why?"

"Because of things you say, the twist in your hips when I watch you walk naked," he said.

"I'm glad you noticed that, I practiced in front of a mirror for ages."

He smiled and shook his head.

"You possess the best sort of insanity. Normally I can read people, but I can't read you or your mind at all so you're entirely unpredictable and not much surprises me these days. You have no roots or reason, you just live to live. You're inspiration indefinite to someone like me because I live a dead end life. You're so alive it's like you bring me to life, too. But mostly, I love you because I'm a fool."

"I don't think loving me is foolish," I said, playfully shoving his shoulders. "I think it's fucking brilliant."

He laughed and hugged me. I went limp like a rag doll, letting my arms hang and my head loll back while he held me up and dipped me back, his low ripples of laughter making my skin tingle and my heart warm.

"Let's go find a place with pie," Edward said. "I'm starving."

"I want a hamburger with chocolate cake," I said.

I didn't ask about the fresh cut above his right brow or about the handle of what felt like a gun pressed into against my leg around his back.

Edward led me down secret short paths lined with rusting chain link fences and barking dogs as he held my hand in his, both tucked in the pocket of his jacket.

"What was Rosalie's problem?" I asked. "Is she trying to bang you, too?"

He laughed quietly at this and shook his head.

"She thinks you're trouble."

"Me?" I laughed. "In my own right, yes. My parents certainly thought so and I was banned from a few class-mates' homes. And they don't like me too much in most churches, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say if I'm trouble, you're a fucking danger bomb."

"I'm a nice boy," he said, then turned to me suddenly. With no hands on me at all he backed me into the fence just by slowly coming at me.

"Tell me," I whispered as his fingers wound in the fence on either side of my head.

"She's afraid," he said, his head ducking down, warm lips pressing to the cool skin on my neck. "She's terrified that I'll lose my mind and tell you and show you things about us that could take us all down. She thinks you're a fool for dipping yourself into my particular fire. She regrets ever being young and stupid enough to get involved because now…"

"Now what?" I asked, breathless when he straightened up and grinned down at me.

"Now she's stuck. She knows too much, she's done too much, we'll never let her out and she wouldn't know what else to do anyway."

"How bad is it?" I asked.

"So bad."

"Will you tell me?"

"If I tell you how big and bad it is, I'd have to keep you forever," he said, with half a smile and half serious intent.

"I want it," I whispered, and he laughed as he dipped down again.

"No one wants this," he said, his face in my collar and his teeth grazing my neck. "No one wants to be a monster."

He bit down softly on my throat and I tossed my head back, wanting more.

EPOV

The deal about dealing is when I was young and hungry I found a stupid way to make easy money. When I was that young, I was thrilled just to be alive and surviving on my own. I was too exhilarated to recognize that there would be long-reaching consequences down the path I'd chosen.

I'd been slinging shit since I was fourteen and I suppose that jades me. Maybe the time I put in affords me to be able to distance myself from what this actually is. In this world, with these people, in these times, it's easy to get smug enough to justify making junkies out of darlings.

And I get it: I get that they feel like Gods, I get the total escape from pain. I get that I'm offering temporary euphoria but I also get that what goes up must come down. But I don't force shit on anyone and when it ruins them in the countless ways it inevitably will, I hold fast to this: they knew better.

Even as a green kid, I was good at it, which is a terrible thing to be good at. I'd like to say it snowballed and became this before I could grasp it, but that's lie. It grew because I'm a mastermind and the things I couldn't plan my way into, I took by force. And it's not easy. This is bone-crushing, soul-stealing work. I fucking sweat sins at the end of the day. But shit, surviving isn't about doing what you want; it's about doing what you must.

Rose knew me through some ex-boyfriend that had a hard-on for abusing her. He also happened to be hooked on what I sell. She got away from him, I helped her. She did the deed, but I helped her take him down. Still, when he was dead and gone, she needed some. Some money, somewhere to go, some family. So I provided that and then she hated me for it. Rose was stuck being what she despised. She was stuck sharing a fatal secret with me, so some days she couldn't even look me in the eye, probably because mine hold no guilt. But when she closes _her_ eyes at night, I hope she thinks that I'm better than the violent-girl-beater I got her away from. I might be evil, but I'm hoping I'm the lesser.

Rose is the opposite of Emmett, who is having the time of his life whether he's breaking someone's ribs or being the heartbeat of the party.

I have no idea where the hell Jasper actually comes from, only that he came around with no strings at all when he was fifteen and that he's an astounding contradiction of extreme sensitivity and brutal violence. It's as though either heaven let him glide on down or he came from the depths of hell, both middle fingers in the air. Jasper is constantly fighting off the very thing he is. He's meant for mean streets and a mean life, he wants it; you can see it in his eyes, read it in his scars. He wants it so I don't know why he tries to be sweet, why he yearns to be someone he's just not. If I had to guess, I'd say he does it for Alice.

 _Jesus._

The things wild ones do for love.

BPOV

Alice and I were sitting criss-cross -apple sauce high up on the catwalk, our knees touching. She'd let me dress up in an old ballet tutu she had. The pink tulle that fell just above my knees made me feel like a sweetheart. Mike hovered above me and Alice, using his phone as a spotlight right over us.

I had a thick needle in one hand and my other was pinching the bridge of Alice's nose. Beside me was a plastic bottle of cheap vodka and a rag that was used to wipe down the needle. Fools like us should never be burdened with boredom, it always makes for bad decisions and bloodshed.

"This is such a shitty punk-rock idea," Mike said, his eyes narrowed with morbid excitement.

"How much will it bleed?" Alice asked.

"Probably about—" I didn't finish the sentence, I just rammed that pin right through Alice's septum but my hands were quick, then there was a silver ring in Alice's nose. Not that you could really see it. There was blood running down over her lip and Alice was howling and laughing and crying.

"You bitch!" she laughed, on her back now, stomping her feet on the floor while she delicately held her face.

"Oh shit, that looks so brutal," Mike said with a wince. "Is it supposed to bleed that much?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "I've never done this. Well, once in a dream."

"It's just like you to stab someone with no warning at all," Alice said with a laugh before rolling over again, then staggered off to go clean up or check it out or yank it out.

Mike sat down and let his legs dangle. I sat up, too, because someone had opened the heavy grate of a door out front and let it fall with a crash. Footsteps and chatter echoed out before Edward, Jasper and a girl were in view, far below where I sat. I'd seen her here and there, no one just stumbles upon the A, or Edward for that matter. I'd seen her laughing and dancing and once, asleep in the middle of a wild, wild party. But I'd never seen her in tears and screaming, carrying on the way she was now.

"What's her name again?" I whispered to Mike.

"Victoria."

Her red hair was wild like fire around her as she stumbled behind Edward and Jasper before she pulled on the back of Edward's jacket. He stopped cold and turned, ripping himself out of her grasp and catching her wrist in his fist. He shoved her hand back at her.

"He'll have your money on Monday, Edward, I swear—we just need until Monday," she rushed, swiping her running nose. This may have been pathetic, but it wasn't desperate. It was aggressive.

Edward glanced up to wear I was sitting and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets before looking at Victoria.

"What's Monday? Monday means nothing to me. Monday is a lie," Edward said, his jacket spreading as his arms spread with a shrug. "We said Friday, it's Friday. And I'm sorry for him Vic, I'm truly fucking blue and heartbroken for him because he is so fucked up he turned into a man who can't keep a basic fucking agreement."

"What difference does three days make?" Victoria shouted, raw voice, raw eyes loud and wide.

"The difference is being a man of his word and being a liar who deserves what's coming to him. James is always fucking trying to slide and Vic, you know damned well how this goes—"

"He was your friend, you scum!" she shrieked and Edward smiled. She came at him, swinging her arms, slapping her hands and he let her. "You're the fucking devil! You fucking—"

"Enough," Edward snapped, catching her wrist again and dropping it just as quickly. "James knew damned well when he got in this that you either win or you get fucked. He chose fucked. You go home and tell him he shouldn't have habits he can't afford. Then you tell him I'm coming for what he owes and if he doesn't have it, I'm willing to settle for his fingers."

"Go to hell, Edward," she said, spitting on the ground.

Victoria turned one last time and looked at Edward and Jasper, who was standing by, expressionless, arms crossed. Then her head slowly turned up and she looked at me, Mike and back to me again.

"See you Friday," Edward said.

"Not if I see you first," she said, her eyes still on me.

As soon as the door crashed again Edward looked up to the catwalk at me.

"Come down," he said before glancing at Jasper who nodded and headed for the stairs.

It was a quiet walk to the basement, to the back corner where that bench was and the bare light bulb still hung, making everything illuminated in dirty yellow.

"What a shit-show," I said, stretching on my tip-toes to tap the hot light bulb with my finger.

Jasper came back in with Emmett, who must've been skulking around quietly all day; I hadn't seen him come or go at all.

Emmett had some kind of leather strap in his hand and a huge smile.

"Is this going to turn into some kind of deranged spanking game?" I asked, doing a slow spin in the fluffy tutu.

Emmett looked to Edward, who was shrugging out of his jacket to reveal a gun shoulder holster strapped across the broad expanse of his back.

Edward turned back to me with his palms up, his expression was a wordless confession: This Is Bad.

"I don't know what you want me to say," I said, plain and honest. Fact was, I knew this. I just hadn't seen him in action.

"This is the second time I should be telling you to get away from me. If I was a good person, if I was any kind of Romeo, this is where I would leave you," he said with a wicked grin. "But I'm not."

He held out his hand and Emmett slapped the leather strap into Edward's palm, then winked at me. I winked back and Edward stood back, raising his eyebrows to Jasper and Emmett.

"Go on," he told them, jerking his head back toward the staircase. When they were out of sight, I reached out and pulled on the cuff of Edward's sleeve.

"Come on," I said, "Come kiss me."

He pulled his sleeve out of my grasp with a jerk of his arm and looked at me for a quiet moment, his eyebrows pulled down, shaking his head so slightly.

"What?" I asked.

"Do you want me?" he asked.

"Always and in all ways."

"All ways? All the garbage that comes along with me? Because we do a lot of fucking pretending, me and you. You don't even ask the basic questions. You've never once asked where I'm going. You don't ask about the trouble I could potentially be in or the fucking terrible things I've done to people."

"Your damage is done and set in cement," I told him. "It was before I got my hands in your pants. I know what you are. Here I am, anyway."

"Say it. Say you want all of it. Because I can't just keep giving up pieces of myself to you anymore. It's fucking exhausting to hide half of what I am."

"So don't."

"I'm too much and I'm never enough. You can't ever ask me to stay when I have to go but you can't ever leave me. Do you get that? You can never leave with my bloody secrets in your head. But in return, I can give you the world, Bella. If you belong to me, if you give it all up to me, I swear to God, I'll try to make it worth it. I'll bring you the fucking stars, baby, so say you want it," he said, with his hands holding my face and eyes that wouldn't be denied.

"I want it."

"You better not be a liar."

I pulled the gun from the holster wrapped around him.

He closed his fist around the barrel and kissed me twice before he dropped to his knees in front of me.

His cool fingers went up and under the tulle skirt, skimming my bare thigh. I felt the leather wrap around my leg and Edward pushed the skirt up with his free hand just a bit before I grabbed the hem and held it up for him.

He clasped a gun holster to my leg then ran his finger over it, his eyes darkened with what I'd grown to recognize as lust.

"I shouldn't be trusted with a gun," I said as he slipped it from my hand.

"I shouldn't be trusted with your heart," he replied, sliding the gun into place in the holster around my leg. "Let's call it a draw."

"I'm serious. I don't want to hurt myself or you or someone I shouldn't—"

He smiled at that, at how I was willing to shoot the _right_ people. Edward kissed my knee and stood up to take my face in his hands, I grasped the leather straps near his shoulders.

"No, just the ones you should. I'll teach you."

"Why _now_?" I asked.

"Because it can't go on this way. Victoria? That was a threat. Being with me means my name is a target on your back for every cry-baby who wants some kind of revenge on me, and I've pissed a few people off," he said, rolling his eyes. "But they can't come after you if _you're_ the fucking bad guy, Bella."

"That's what this is…" I said, "being with you means being like you."

"It's the only way it'll work out," he said, "I could've let you go, but…"

"But what?"

"I don't have to."

"What if I didn't say it? What if I would've chosen to run away just now?" I asked with a smile, tugging him closer to me.

"I can run faster."

EPOV

I believe everything born with a soul has a calling. Some are born for great saint-like, grandiose things that save lives; the type of sublime and divine acts I'll never feel the glory of.

Some are born to fulfill filthy shit that happens in the dark spots of the world.

No matter what it is, every sad bastard has a calling. I thought I knew what my destiny was, I thought I was born damned to do these evil deeds because the world needs bad. Without it, we'd never know good. I believed my part was to add to the dirt so the good can shine even brighter.

But wouldn't you just fucking know it, that as soon as I've casted myself off as a walking dead man with nothing to lose, I think my place might actually be up the pink skirt of a girl I'm hopelessly in love with.

Love. It's like a splash of acid to the heart. It'll disfigure you. Give love enough time to really take root, and it'll mangle your views, your priorities. It'll change a man.

For the first time in my life, I said a prayer to whatever is supposed to be listening.

 _Please. Please, let me get this right; I don't deserve this love but I want it anyway._

BPOV

Edward, who seemed to appear and vanish from the dark sky, actually had a home. It was an old bungalow far outside of the city and deep in the woods on a riverbank, hidden by trees. Emmett, Jasper and Alice and Rosalie always parked in the back. I didn't have to ask to know the remote and hidden location was deliberate.

After he strapped his gun under my skirt, Edward let me into the rest of his world. For all of the bus catching and walking he did in the city, he actually had a car. He had a closet with clothes and cabinets with drinking glasses and a dishwasher and wood floors and a soft, modest bed. The days in that house were a small slice of time where Edward and I lived so _normally_ in confined domesticity.

One night, I hung out the front door in my underwear and Edward's jacket as his headlights came in to view. Edward didn't want me staying at the A when he wasn't around anymore, so he put me in his house with locks and a gun when he went out, leaving me caged up and alone.

He told me it'd be dangerous to have me come out with him and for awhile, I let that answer be enough. But he couldn't avoid it forever and I was getting restless.

I'd shed the jacket by the time he walked in the door and stood with my hands on my bare waist in my bra and flimsy underwear.

"Really nice," Edward said, one brow raised as he toed his shoes off. I turned in a slow circle, arms above my head as he dumped keys, wallet and Glock on the small table he kept near the door.

"Take your clothes off, too," I said, pulling on his hands, bringing him inside.

He leaned to kiss me while I tugged on his belt and he laughed with his lips still on mine. I gave up on the belt and attempted to climb up him instead. He felt the struggle and lifted me easily, hoisting me above him and then looked up at me.

I tugged his hood down and put my hands on the back of his neck while he walked us toward the kitchen.

"Guess what?" I asked.

"What?"

"I did your laundry," I told him, wide eyed.

"You didn't have to do that," he said, pressing a kiss to the side of my neck.

"I wanted to. You know, I think that I might be cut out to be a little homemaking lady," I said. "Could you imagine?"

"No," he said with a short laugh. "I could not."

"I guess I couldn't really either. I didn't put the laundry away. I got bored and drank a bottle of wine in the tub. I'm a domestic mess."

"You're strobe lights and bubbles, Bella. Not pot roasts and laundry."

"Are you hungry? Because—"

"Not if you cooked."

"I told you I won't attempt that anymore," I said and scooted down and out of his grasp. "I picked up Chinese."

Edward stopped short when he saw the containers all over the counter, his expression going from playful to pissed.

"I had to get out for a second," I said flatly. We'd had this argument before.

He walked toward the bathroom without a word, losing his clothes as he went and I followed on his heels, always nipping at him, never letting him out easy.

"You can't ignore me," I told him and this made him laugh mean as he turned the shower on, hot. Hot as it could go.

"No one is going to shoot me while I'm picking up Chinese food, that's absurd," I said, pulling myself up to sit on the sink.

He rolled the glass door open all the way and looked at me over his shoulder with flat, cold eyes.

"Victoria's boyfriend told everyone who will listen he's going to slice your throat," Edward said. "Go eat your fucking rice before it gets cold."

"That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?" I asked, but coldness was seeping into my bones despite the steam quickly taking over the bathroom.

"Not in my world," he said.

"I can't be a prisoner and just live in these walls whenever you go out," I said.

He was staring at the floor and didn't say a word, finally just stepping into the shower and rolling the door shut.

I am the type of girl that lives loudly. I am the type of girl that will wander to the chaotic spots where things are happening. I crave the light that burns in other people, I want to know and understand people. I want to know more and learn more and create more and I can't be shoved in a house in the woods and wait while the world outside is _happening_.

I pulled Edward's rumpled t-shirt on, which smelled like his sweat and gasoline, and pulled the shower door open on him.

His head was bowed under the rush of water, rivulets rained down the bulky planes of his shoulder blades. I wanted to drown him as much as I wanted to kiss him.

"You knew," he said, looking up at me, dripping and smelling pure and clean—two things he was not. "I told you what this would be like."

"Not that I'd be locked away."

He reached to turn the water off and I threw a towel at him before I stormed out of the bathroom and began tossing Chinese take-out cartons around in the kitchen. I threw his dish rack to the ground and started tossing glasses because my God, if I can't be near the messy world, I will fucking make one.

Edward turned up in jeans and bare-feet, entirely bemused as he watched me have a tantrum for about two minutes before he stooped to my low level.

"Knock it off," he shouted, grabbing my arm before it launched a plate into the wall.

"I'm going to smother or be killed!" I shrieked. "I'll do what I want!"

He laughed and restrained my arm behind my back when I elbowed his stomach.

"Oh yeah?" he asked, "What are you going to do now?"

"Let go," I said. He let go and stood back.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm sorry I wanted you and I'm sorry I fell in love with you and I'm sorry this is what it is, but it is and you knew it."

I was finding the words "you knew better" and "you knew it" were Edward's go-to justifiers. Like he could get away with whatever he wanted on the grounds of that half-ass disclaimer. It was the fine print in a deal with the devil.

"What on earth do you expect me to do for forever?" I asked.

"Bella, I said sorry but I only say it once. What do you want? You want a flight somewhere else? I'll pay for it—"

"No! I just—"

"What?" he snapped and pulled a folded stack of cash from his pocket and started tossing it at me. "You want money? You want to go to eat or go get fucked up at the A? What do you want?"

"I want us to be how we were."

" _It can't stay that way,"_ he shouted loudly now, making my bones shake and my ire burn deeper. He reached for a glass on the counter and threw it over my head. It shattered loudly against the wall and he reached for another. "C'mon, throw the fucking plates. Burn the place to the ground, Bella. It won't change shit."

"Stop it."

"Come on," he urged, grabbing a knife from the block. He held it out to me, handle first. "Trash the place, put a knife through me. I did this to you. Take it," he said, thrusting the knife at me. "Put it through my throat."

"Don't do that," I said, shaking my head. "You're not allowed to turn this around like that."

"Do you know me at all? I can do whatever I want," he said, tossing the knife back down on the counter.

"Do you know me at all?" I asked. "I'm crazy hearted. Don't toss knives at me. I might just use them."

He kicked glass shards and noodles out of his way and reached to grab the jacket I'd shed earlier. He put it around my shoulders, not gently at all.

"Let's go," he said.

He grabbed the gun that he'd left on the table on our way out. I didn't bother with pants but he pulled a t-shirt on before leading me out back, into the trees.

"Where are we going?" I asked behind him, nearly jogging to keep up before he reached behind himself and took my hand.

We walked for some time in the woods. If I'd been alone, I'd have been directionless but Edward seemed to know exactly where he was going, with only the moon to light our way.

We stopped at a clearing, a small meadow in the middle of the forest. Someone had hung solar lights around the perimeter from tree limbs. There was a rotting picnic table, covered in vibrant graffiti and various cans, bottles and jugs.

Edward stood behind me and put the gun in my hands, then folded his fingers around mine.

"Shoot it," he said.

I squeezed down hard on the trigger and the gun fired with a loud crack. The kick-back shoved me back into Edward, who didn't waver and braced my arms. He wrapped his hands around mine and we shot it again, and then again. When he guided, we made the objects on the table explode and tumble and fly.

When he withdrew from me, I turned around and watched him reload the gun.

"You like that?" he asked, watching the smile on my face.

"There's a rush in it."

He handed the gun back to me.

"Why are we doing this?"

"This is what I am. What I do. You won't be kept in and you can't run from me now. So you might as well get really fucking good at being really fucking bad. I'm gonna burn in hell for taking you down with me anyway. Practice," he said, nodding to the gun.

Hours later we were back in the house and had stepped over the sharp, jagged remnants of our fight.

Edward had always fucked like he was in charge, with no complaint from me. He had sex the way he conducted himself in most tense situations: with unspoken authority and power, utterly aware of every movement.

His hands slid up the backs of my legs until he reached my waist and he turned me around, facing away from him.

"Put your hands on the wall," he told me and I did, willingly and eagerly.

My cheek bumped into the wall, my nails scratched at the paint. There was the unforgiving hardness of the wall in front of me and behind me, Edward had no mercy either, yet I asked for more.

It was a matter of time before I was going to be just like him. And the thing about people like me and Edward is, you could give us the world but we'll always want what we can't have. He offered everything, but I only wanted him free. I'd simply have to take what he couldn't give.

EPOV

My intentions are true and pure. It's the execution that gets dirty. There's no justification but there's explanation for that monster-night. It was like slipping on the ice. Things are slippery, you know you're going down, you know you're gonna fall but you panic anyway. You grab at anything and flail in fear, you get desperate to stop that fall because you know it'll hurt. It's instinctive; you can't help the manic panic, the things you'll do to try to stop it from all going to hell.

That whole night was just treading water, trying to keep a step ahead.

I was tired of trying to keep her away from this and tired of trying to hold back this train-wreck.

Bella is a grown girl who cannot be contained. She burns hot when she wants something and I melt for it.

Her will is strong and her actions explosive. I couldn't have kept her out of this, not after she made up her own mind to be in it.

I'm just trying to keep our heads out of the dirt and if that means turning her into a monster, I'm sorry, but sorry isn't stopping me.

Besides, she never fit quite right walking the line above the law. She fits with us and not them. The Emmett's, Jasper's, Rose's and Me. This is all she's ever wanted and I'm giving it to her and in return, she's giving me her all, she's giving it all up to me forever.

So, you see, until the end, I will maintain _my_ intentions were pure.

BPOV

Edward, Jasper and Emmett were dwelling deep down in the A and I was with Jess, Mike and Alice. Jess was creating stencils for tattoos and Mike was drawing his drawings while we watched Alice wrap her bloody and bent toes. Pointe shoes have warped her feet but you know it's worth it. The beauty that comes from her pain is worth it. It's that way with most things, I think.

"Tell me who you got your eyes from, Bella," Alice asked, pausing in her wrapping to look up at me.

I chomped down on the Blo-Pop to get to the gum.

"My father."

"What does Daddy do?" Jess asked.

"He finds gorgeous, dangerous beasts and locks them away in cages," I said, crunching through bits of candy and into soft gum.

"He's a hunter?" Mike asked, squinting one eye as he twirled a fat marker around in his fingers.

"Kind of," I said, leaning forward when I heard the familiar sound of Edward's determined gait coming our way, flanked by Jasper and Edward.

It was past midnight, which meant we were about to get up to no-good things. He'd taken me along for the past month or so and I've been to places so dark and filthy I hadn't known they existed and I'd been in penthouses where politicians bled from their noses while laughing naked on the floor.

I asked Edward why he doesn't delegate half of this crap, sit like a boss and rake in money. He could send the kids on the corner who were always looking for work. But Edward said he liked to keep his fingers on everything, know everything. The smaller and more grassroots this is, the safer it is.

But that was a lie he told and I saw truth: he's a bleeding heart who doesn't want to have to drag anyone else in with him.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Hustling," he said with a smile. "You're coming. Get up."

On the sticky public bus, Emmett amused the two other passengers by playing dice with them, right down the grimy aisle.

Jasper sat in the back of the bus, gazing at the busted neon signs and crimes we passed by.

Edward was down in the aisle with Em, his hand out in front of me, the dice in his palm.

"For luck," he said. I kissed his fingertips instead of the dice before he tossed them down the way, over the small pile of cash that had been tossed down for the jackpot. He lost, but I ended up winning a round.

The night was ending as we walked down a dim hallway in a shitty apartment complex that smelled like piss and burnt carpet. Jasper swung a bat around his neck and balanced it over the back of his shoulders, grinning like a mad-man. I'd gotten to know this slice of Jasper. He wasn't stoic or Alice's sweetheart when we were out on the hunt. He was a soldier at play and he fucking loved it. The hunt, the thrill, the win. Emmett ran his finger down the water stained wall, keeping his eyes on the door numbers, humming a song. I walked beside Edward, gum popping, chin up, heart beating double time because it turned out, I loved this.

"Bingo, motherfucker," Emmett sang, stopping at 24 B.

Edward sucked in his lower lip, kicked the door open and stepped in, Jasper quickly at his side, then me, then Emmett.

Two guys and Victoria were sitting at a sagging old card table, all kinds of dirty junk in front of them.

"It's payday, kids," Edward said with a menacing grin.

"Listen, I got something big coming through in two days—" a guy with a blonde pony tail started but quickly got cut off.

"Didn't we just go through this, James?" Edward asked. "No. Not two days, not two hours. Now, right fucking now."

The other guy leaned back in his chair and pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at right at me.

Edward raised his eyebrows and Emmett smiled at me with a wink, Jasper looked bored. This is how it goes when you grow cold.

"You gonna shoot my girl?" Edward asked with a laugh. "That's your solution to this big fucking mess you're in? Jesus. Your problem solving skills are for shit."

"Two days," the blonde repeated and Victoria was staring at me, violent intent radiating from her.

"Fuck two days," I said looking her in the eye.

Emmett laughed out loud at my newfound sense of fuck-you-security afforded to me because of my bad, bad boyfriend.

Victoria stood up and put her hand on the gun pointed at me until he lowered it back to the table.

"If you hurt James, I'll find her and kill her," Victoria said plainly to Edward.

"The problem with junkies is they're entitled. You owe money and now you think you shouldn't have to pay? You're going to kill someone to get out of your debt?" Edward asked with a laugh before slamming his palms on the table top and leaning over, menacing and bold, right in her face. "Don't pick up problems you can't pay for."

In an instant Emmett descended and the blonde's face hit the table, Jasper had the bat over the neck of the gun toting man.

Edward went close to where Emmett was holding James down by the neck, a small streak of bright red blood beginning to snake out from where his face was pressed against the table.

Edward dealt low and sharp blows to his ribs, speaking lowly to James and Victoria sprung at me.

The next few moments were harsh, red violence and a perverted sense of justification and triumph—I lost my damned mind and her face was not the same when I was pulled off of her.

Edward didn't speak until we were alone, back in the alley of the A, hours later when the sun was coming up, revealing blood stains and our sins.

"This is controlled fucking crime," he said to me, holding my waist in his hands as he loomed above me. "Do you get that?"

"Yes."

"Then why the hell were you out of control? You can't do that. You can't go crazy on people, Bella."

"Me? You roll around this city leaving people shaking in your wake—"

"I hurt people who have it coming. I only go after people who knew what they were getting in to when they fucked up. I'm fair. You were reckless."

"She threatened to kill me."

"Victoria is nothing. She's fucking _nothing._ Look at you. Look what I turned you into," he said, stepping back, his hands on top of his head when he turned away. "You can't run your mouth because your feelings got hurt, Bella."

"She wanted it to turn violent, she—"

"I don't give a fuck what anyone wants. It always goes the way _I_ want. I run this. Remember that."

I ran behind him and pulled his jacket, turning him to me. He caught my face and I caught the absolute anguish in his eyes.

The truth was this was a boy fighting his own war.

He hated what he was.

He was too good for it, too sensitive for it, too sweet on love to be so feared.

If I had to guess, I would say that meeting me was Edward Cullen's ultimate reckoning.

He was all love, stuck living a life that was all hate and I only made his eyes open to that.

He's a boy at war alright. He doesn't need to be, though, because I'll save him. If I have to tear it down to do it, I'll save him from himself. Because his way wasn't the only way, it wasn't the life sentence he believed it was. It wasn't cool and it wasn't fulfilling. It was decaying and killing him.

"You're not mad at me," I said. "You saw yourself in me. And you hated it."

EPOV

Bella wasn't wrong.

She had me wanting her dreamy world after I'd committed myself to the nightmare. The weight of that regret was so huge I could hardly breathe around it.

And look what I'd done to her. I made her mine, kept her all for me; I had this girl doing heavy shit that could get her locked up just so I could keep her. All I could do was blame myself and keep her close, because I got what I wanted. She was mine and stuck that way forever.

Vic will take Bella out if I let her go free on her own or the cops will pick her up or hell, Rose won't have her walking around with our secrets.

But you know. This is what I wanted, this is what I created.

I fucking won, but it felt like losing.

I was the fucking King, but I knew I'd be brought to my knees for this.

BPOV

It was a good day in the A. There'd been no work, no blood, no arguing for weeks as far as I saw. Jasper was back to creating and Alice was back to watching him from the catwalk.

Edward was helping Emmett move a bunch of D.J. equipment and Mike was making Jess into a superhero on a bunch of glossy papers.

I was alone in the basement reading a book, something I ought to do more. Edward found me, hanging off the couch, feet in the air, hair spilled to the floor.

He slid the book from my hand and helped me straighten up and get to my feet.

"Hey," he smiled. It was soft, sweet. He'd been that way, wet eyed and soft lately. It was a heartbreaker way to be, especially if you looked like Edward. He kissed at the side of my neck and I pulled down onto the tattered couch with me.

His fingers played with the necklace around my throat while he hovered above me and I let my hands wander down his back and up again.

"I love you, Bella," he said, resting his hand on top of my head before letting his palm run down my face as he laughed.

"Well, you'd better," I said, "I don't go taking off my underwear for just anyone."

"I own your underwear," he said, all boyish smile and disheveled hair. He began sliding down my body, lips first.

"You're happy today," I commented.

"I'm glad you're mine."

I put my hands in his hair and lifted his face and took a breath.

"What if I asked you to stop?" I asked. "What if I wanted babies and a house in Idaho?"

My heart pounded as his smile fell and his eyes grew dark.

"No," he said, lifting up now, his body inches from mine but covering all of me.

"No? Be serious. One day you'll be forty or fifty. Or what if I'd like to see Spain or Ireland or—"

"Then we'll go. I can give you that—"

"Maybe someday you could be legit and go to school or get a job and you could be free of—"

"Is that what you want?" he asked, quite serious but not looking at me.

"No. What I mostly meant was what if there was more out there?"

"Don't do this," he said, standing up, off and away from me. "Don't you dare do this. You don't get to have _more_ , you get to have _me_. That's what you signed up for."

"I'm just talking. I see you Edward, and you hate this. It's not about me, I could do this forever. It's about you. I know you—"

"This is what I am and it's what you are now, too. You _thought_ you knew. You thought you'd be happy with this but now you're seeing glimpses of forever this way. There _is_ no out, Bella. There _is_ no more—"

"That's not it at all," I said, sitting up. "I'm just saying _what if_ I asked—"

He turned back to me and stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged, abruptly calm.

"Rose, Em, Jasper, even Alice. They'd be in a lot of deep shit if I just left. A lot of people are mad, a lot of people are just hovering, waiting for me to fuck off or die so they can take my place. I know too much about a lot of powerful people who'd rather see me and my friends dead than done with this," he said, "But if you asked, I'd consider it. And that scares the shit out of me. So don't fucking ask."

EPOV

Yeah. I trapped her to keep her. I let her dig herself too deep, hell I gave her the shovel and pushed her in the hole. But I didn't lie about it, I was fair about it. When I fucked her over, she had her arms and eyes wide open. _I_ told the truth, _I_ gave her a choice, which is more than she ever did for me.

BPOV

After that argument, things became loud in the best ways and quiet in the right ways. Emmett had taught me how to properly scratch a record like an old school D.J. and Alice found she fit through a few slats up near the catwalk. She procured some old copper pipes and gave them to Jasper who opted to use them to create instead of hock. Jess and Mike went to some convention in a city far from ours.

Edward had been around, all through the nights, sending boys with backpacks out to do his work. Together, we committed nothing but misdemeanors for fun and ran freely in the streets at night. People stayed out of Edward's way when he was at play. It was interesting how alive he became when out of the constraint of the life he hates. The part of him that makes money is a dead man, a cold one, that old vampire. But when he's free, he's all human and all heart.

"What do you wish?" I asked Edward, sitting across from him on the floor of the A. His palm was flat on a sheet of paper and I was tracing his hand with a marker I swiped from Mike. In his free hand, Edward had both a bottle of beer and a burning cigarette. He squinted his eyes and thought before he answered.

"Are we talking anything, even the impossible?" he asked.

"Anything under the sun and beyond."

"I wish…" he stopped, his brows furrowing as he looked at his hand on the paper. "I wish to know what's right and for the ability to do it. I wish there wasn't a hell because I'm certain that's where I'll end up. I wish for different ideals and at the same time, I wish that at the end of all of these days I could sleep like I used to when I was young. So maybe I have decent ideals hidden somewhere in me. Some days, but not many, I wish I hadn't made my life into a fucking cage. But most days I remember it's what kept me alive when I was a kid with nothing else and so I'm okay with it. But mostly, I wish to keep you happy. I wish you'll never want to leave."

I'm sure he looked beautiful then, but my tears blurred my vision as the pencil I had between his fingers stopped.

"I also wish you'd finish whatever masterpiece you're working on because my hand is falling asleep," he laughed.

"Edward."

"Nah. Don't cry, Bella. I'm not as broken as that sounded. Those were abstract wishes, like how you wished to have a mermaid tail," he said, tilting his head to catch my eye. "I'm good with my reality. You understand?"

I nodded and gave a watery smile. He was good with it because he thought he had to be. He didn't know I could be a hero on his ever-dark horizon.

Thing about Edward was he lived by his self-imposed rules and couldn't see hope beyond them.

Thing about me is I'd never subscribed to rules. I'd never believed in the lie of _impossible._

"Take me on a walk," I told him, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. "Buy me shitty food and put your arm around me. And I'll be happy."

Later, he put a blanket over my shoulders and I pulled up his hood and yanked the strings tight, hanging on to them while I kissed his lips.

"We look ridiculous," he said.

"We are ridiculous," I reminded him as we stepped out into the back alley.

"The world is ours, kid," he said, then stopped and looked down the way. "Where are we going?"

"It's like we're on a date," I said. "Don't get handsy and have me home by ten."

"It's already eleven-thirty, dizzy princess," he said.

"We're a couple of no-good rule breakers anyway," I said, skipping ahead of him to run out into the world and hop on a curb.

I tied the ends of my blanket under my chin so it became a cape and walked heel-toe on the curb. Edward followed a bit behind, his hands shoved in his pockets while we walked. I paused and looked over my shoulder when a couple of kids came out of the shadows and scurried off after a shady looking hand shake with Edward.

"You're a workaholic," I said.

He hopped up on the curb with me and spread the blanket out so I had bat-wings.

"Someone has to afford your outlandish lifestyle of Mohawk vodka and Chinese food," he said, sliding his hand down my arm and to my hand. He lifted it high. "Spin for me."

I carefully twirled on the curb, imagining I was Alice the ballerina.

"For someone who lives such a hard way, you love pretty things," I commented.

"I really do," he said, but reached into the blanket where his gun was strapped to my thigh. He loved that, it was like just-for-him porn, the idea of that gun strapped to my leg.

I kicked out of his grasp and ran, cape flying behind me.

"Get back here," he called. "Come back where you belong."

We ended up at some house party two bus rides away where there were fist fights and a makeshift dance-floor and a few passed out bodies on the muddy front lawn.

People equally adored and feared my boyfriend. He stuck to dark corners with sweating, shaking and eager kids who tried to score or make deals or just make him into a friend. Edward kept his words few and his eyes on me while I was a party-girl. I danced under a glitter bomb of a light and made new friends and laughed over indescribable, stupid things.

I danced for Edward because I felt his eyes, felt the heat of him when a glimpse of that gun would flash when my skirt flipped up. I recklessly did what I did and he made sure I was watched over and guarded.

That morning we fucked as the sun was coming up. We didn't make it to home but rather to the quiet, vast basement of the A. Normally, he's a thigh grabber, a dominating force that puts his hands and his mouth on every inch of flesh he encounters. Normally, he consumes and I'm eager to be his. But that night, I stretched up, my back arched while his hands ran down my neck and grabbed my hips. He closed his eyes while I got the best of him.

I pinned him down with my hands on his shoulders and took all of him and warned him over and over that I'm crazy for him. Crazy, crazy, crazy for him.

EPOV

Sleep had never come easy for me ever since I was a boy who had to sleep with one eye open. I was already up when Emmett walked into the basement. It must have been before sunrise because he was still up from the night and he doesn't fuck much with daylight.

Em was more brother than he was friend. We have a shared history of ecstasy, love, brutality and up- all- night between us. It means we'll always be weaved together, in some way or another. It also means we can read each other fairly easily, with few words between us.

That brand new day, he was tentative which is something he is not by nature which meant something was wrong. Against-the-laws-of-nature wrong.

Bella was asleep on her stomach, my shirt over her bare ass, as I wordlessly followed Emmett out and up the stairs, away from where Bella slept.

Rosalie was standing there with a stack of papers in her hand and she wouldn't look me in the eye, but not because she was nervous and not because she was smug. But for the sake of my own dignity, I think.

"What's up?" I asked, puffy lipped as I took the cigarette Em offered and stuck in the corner of my lips.

"Bella's father is a fucking DEA agent," Rosalie said, holding out the papers. I didn't need her proof. To be blunt, Rosalie and I killed a man together. She's thorough as anything, she doesn't waste breath on dramatics or lies. If she was telling me something, it was truth. "She made an odd comment about him to Alice awhile ago. About locking up dangerous things or something and the way she talks sometimes, I just…I just fucking knew it, so I did some digging."

I zipped my jeans and smoked half the cigarette without a word before stubbing it out on wall and blowing the final plume of smoke up to the ceiling.

I took the papers from Rosalie's slack hand and rolled them up and turned, heading back to where I left Bella.

That fucking traitor.

That pretty, fun, sparkling fucking traitor.

I didn't even care that she made a fool of me, I didn't care that she was a liar, I'd known that. I cared about what the hell she thought she was going to do about forever this way.

She was standing there, having woken up, back in that tutu with my shirt tied up tight, just under her tits.

No clue what she saw on my face but hers turned a morbid shade of white.

I held up one paper and let it glide slowly to the floor, swooshing and sailing back and forth until it landed, face up. She looked down at it and I stepped over it, toward her, holding up the next and dropping it as she started to scramble backward. As if she could outrun all that she'd brought down.

"You never asked about my father," she said, taking another step back as another paper fell. I continued to descend slowly on her. "I never would have told my father about you."

"You're a liar."

"He can get you out of it, Edward," she whispered quickly. "If we go to my father, he can get you immunity and start your life over."

That is when I knew what people meant by the phrase "blood boil." I paused in my steps, overcome with dangerous rage. Immunity. Toss my friends, toss the sweet junkie darlings right into the river like I was some kind of rat while her father patted me on the head.

"Oh stop it," she said with a sneer when she registered the look on my face. Bella stood tall, no longer moving back.

She was just in my way. Bella had been in my fucking way this whole time. She blinded me, made me slip, loved me and had me questioning turning this entire thing upside down and shaking out loyal people all the while never mentioning her fucking blood could be the end of me.

"You knew I was wildcard, Edward, you wanted it. You were just looking for someone to come along and stop you in your tracks because you fucking hate living like this. You knew I was mean and you knew _better_. Just like you always say, ' _you knew better,_ '" she said, pointing her finger at me. "You're no fool. You love me and you let me in because you knew I'd fuck it all up. You knew I'd end it, that I'd do what you couldn't. So you're welcome."

The second time I met Bella, she gave me a kiss to my wounded hand and made it hurt. Her kind of love can often hurt when trying to make things all better.

She is mean. She's cruel and cunning and unfair and she was right: _I knew it._

Somewhere in my mind, I always knew she'd be the undoing to all of this and I let her in.

And now I had a feeling she was about to make me into the man I always wanted to be. If that's not crazy, rotten live-for-it love, what the hell is?

"What will you do now?" I asked.

"They'll kill me," she said. "Rose will make sure. They'll kill me for this because they know I could run to my father at any time, but I'm a girl that _loves_ to live. I can't risk being dead. And listen to me, Edward. I don't hate what you do. I hate what it makes you feel and I hate that you're stuck and don't want to be. I hate it so much, it's made me cold. Colder than you. Cold enough to do this."

"You're a fucking lunatic."

"Yes. Don't you find it wild?" she asked, lifting her skirt slowly, to show my gun strapped to her pale thigh. And there I was, unstrapped and half naked.

I shook my head slowly, rolling my eyes at her. So fucking predictable. So cliché, my little grasshopper. My student became the teacher as she pointed it at me and I laughed at her.

She smiled and shrugged; her soft doe-eyed gaze was begging me to concede and love her. That pretty pink skirt shivered and I knew she was shaking.

"You wouldn't do it," I said.

"You wouldn't make me."

"I could just take the gun away from you," I said.

"Probably. But people do insane things for love and Edward, I'm crazy for you. I'm answering your prayers and I'm granting your wishes here, so help me out a little," she said, the tip of her nose turned pink and her eyes watered. "Please."

I did something I once swore I'd never do, I turned my back to someone I had no reason to trust.

I felt her kiss on my shoulder blade at the same time the cool metal from the gun pressed into the back of my neck. It was, perhaps, the most liberating moment of my fucked life. It's extraordinary, how sometimes you gain so much the moment you give up control.

"Okay," she whispered and she walked me up the stairs, weapon to my neck.

Upstairs, that great old building was empty aside from all of our secrets, hanging around like oppressive fog.

She leaned to grab my jacket from the post where I'd slung it on the way in the night before. Just then, Emmett appeared from around the corner, across the vast room.

"Where the hell do you think you're going, Bella?" he asked, but his eyes were on mine.

"I think it's clear I can't stay," she said. It was wistful and I do believe she was sad to leave him.

"No, what's clear is you can't walk out of here knowing what you know, either," Emmett said.

She moved the gun to the side of my neck so he could see it and let out a long, slow breath.

"Jesus, Bella. Knock it off," he told her.

"I'm taking him. If you follow us or come after us, ever, I'm going to call my father and tell them everything I know. And I love you and I don't want to do that. So please."

Emmett gaped at her, his eyes wide before he slipped them back over to me.

"What'd you want me to do?" he asked.

"I don't make the decisions anymore. It's yours now," I told him, "Go through the desk. Do the thing, take my place—"

"Fuck you," he said, but he didn't mean it. He meant " _don't leave."_

"He doesn't have a choice," Bella said. "Neither do you."

God. I was sorry. I was so sorry. But he could do it. They all could. They'd all be okay or they wouldn't. I'd never know either way, which was just as well because knowing might kill me.

But staying would kill me, too, because not for a second did I doubt she'd actually shoot that gun. She hates what I cannot; she hates my sadness and hate kills. Ironically, her hate was going to save me from this caged and damned life.

By that time the next day, we were far away from the A and free. I had no skill, no money, no direction. But I had hope and a wide open world full of possibilities, I had clean hands for the first time in so long and I had Bella.

She's too reckless and I'm too cold, she dreams and I scheme.

We're some kind of dark and destined, but it's love.

Not the standard love, not the love we're taught is good. But then, how can anyone attempt to define love when it's so personal, when it's so dependent on the uniqueness of life and circumstance?

It was fucked, it was the type of love others warn against and deny is love at all. It wasn't patient, it wasn't kind. It was selfish and it was possessive, but it was our own, and we'd never been the type to follow the rules.

We don't fit on any list of healthy and functioning but I know this: When we stab each other through the heart and double cross, when we trap and tangle the other just to keep them near; just when you think ' _My God, these are sordid, despicable people'_ , remember that there is nothing softer or more sensitive than those who love. There's nothing we won't do for love. While this may mean the actions of a monster it doesn't for a second make us evil; we're simply more desperate than the cowards who wouldn't go to such lengths for love. Our destruction caused along the way was simply the bloody means to the angel-soft end: Always love.

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